


the changing of us

by screamlet



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 23:20:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10627275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/screamlet/pseuds/screamlet
Summary: Nicky wanted a family.He wanted a family very much, but not like this.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [babygotbackstrom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/babygotbackstrom/gifts).



Nicky wanted a family.

He wanted a family very much, but not like this. 

*

Tom called and a phone call, not a text, from one of the boys was enough of an event that Nicky picked up already wary. 

“Backy, please, can we—it’s Andre, can we bring him to you guys? Please? We’re on our way—we can’t take him to a hospital, and he’s—”

“Tom, calm down, call the team doctors, I have their—”

“No! No, it’s—it’s not a doctor thing—”

“Tom—”

“We’re almost there,” Tom said before he hung up.

Alex had been reading on the other couch when Nicky picked up, but he left the book when Nicky said what he said. He sat next to Nicky and rested a hand on the side of Nicky’s neck, his thumb stroking along Nicky’s jaw.

“Something happened to Andre,” Nicky said. “If it were drugs, they still would have taken him to the doctors. I hope. I don’t know what it could be.” 

Alex’s thumb rested over a spot on Nicky’s neck where there would be a pulse if they weren’t both undead. He met Alex’s eyes when he realized what Alex meant.

“No,” Nicky said. “If Andre were thinking of changing, he would have told us, and if he wasn’t—if there were a vampire, a _predator_ , within twenty miles of here or downtown, we would know it. We would _know_.” 

“We’ve been safe a long time,” Alex said. “We haven’t had to keep that close an eye on intruders for a long, long time.” Nicky gave him a look and Alex rolled his eyes at himself. “Okay, like eight years, that’s nothing, but it’s longer than we’ve been anywhere, hasn’t it?”

“It has.” Nicky knew he had whispered that, but Alex didn’t mind how quiet his voice went. He didn’t mind the way Nicky edged closer or when their arms wrapped around each other. Alex rested his hand in Nicky’s hair and held him tight for a long moment. Nicky closed his eyes, but he hadn’t had to contend with the pounding of his heart for three centuries now. There was a stillness to their bodies that was more familiar and comforting than being alive. 

A car screeched into their driveway. Nicky took a breath and he and Alex rushed to the door.

*

“Bathtub, come on,” Alex barked. Mike cradled Andre in his arms while Tom climbed out of the driver’s seat of their car. “First floor, come on!” Tom tried to rush after them, but Nicky put a hand on his chest and held him back.

“Backy, I have to—”

“What happened?”

Tom’s gaze was fixed on the front door where Alex, Mike, and Andre’s long limp body had disappeared. Nicky grabbed his arm tight and drew his attention. “What happened?” he repeated. 

“We didn’t—he was seeing some guy,” Tom said. He turned his face towards Nicky, but he refused to meet Nicky’s eyes. “He was going to introduce us tonight, wanted to make it special, and we—Nick, we didn’t know. We didn’t know he was even thinking—”

“The one who did this isn’t like us,” Nicky said. “We would never do this.”

Tom’s face crumpled into pure remorse. “Me and Latts, we don’t know if he didn’t tell us because it was a vampire or because—because it was a guy. I mean, it’s me and Latts, we told him about us forever ago, why wouldn’t he—Backy, he didn’t trust us. Why wouldn’t he trust us?”

“It’s not your fault,” Nicky said. “Come on, come inside. We have to take care of him now.”

*

The first floor didn't have the largest bathroom in Alex and Nicky’s house, but the tub was long enough to submerge Andre’s neck and shoulders in cold water. Mike already had a garbage bag open, filling it with every piece of clothing he cut off Andre while Alex attended to Andre’s neck. 

Nicky left Tom at the doorway and kneeled behind Alex, touching his shoulder lightly in warning. “How bad is it?”

“He’ll change,” Alex said. “But this—this is terrible, even if he won't scar.” He shifted to let Nicky lean into the tub and see, lifting the thick towel from the base of Andre’s neck. “The deep bite to drink, but the rest was just for fucking _fun_ , dragging his teeth all down his chest, cutting him open. Deep into the back of his shoulder, too.”

“Nick, we didn’t know,” Mike protested. “We didn’t know the guy, either, just that he and Andre had been seeing each other. The four of us were supposed to have dinner tonight and we found him like this, right on the couch. Like he wanted us to find him.”

Nicky reached for Mike and stroked his cheek, then motioned to the tub in front of them, half-filled with water. “Rinse your hands here, then go to the sink for soap.” He turned around to Tom, who was still in the doorway, his arms wrapped around himself. “Tom? Tom, take your clothes off, everything that has blood on it. Same for you, Mike, and rinse off here.”

“Why wouldn’t he tell us?” Tom asked. “Why would he think—”

“He didn’t know this would happen,” Nicky said. “He wasn’t afraid. It wasn’t your fault.” 

In the bathtub, in Alex’s arms, Andre let out a startled sound that made the four of them jump. Andre opened his eyes wide for a moment, gasped, then slumped into Alex’s arms and the cold water again. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” Tom whispered. 

“He’s not dead,” Mike said. 

“No, he’s not dead,” Alex said. “And we’re in for a long night.”

*

While Alex and Mike cleaned up Andre, Nicky led Tom to one of their closets and began to pull towels, gauze, and bandages off the shelves, handing them to Tom. “Alex stopped most of the bleeding, but we’ll need to change these in a few hours as the rest of the blood leaves his body. We’ll take him upstairs and keep him cool through the fever. Take everything to Alex and I’ll get one of the bedrooms upstairs ready.”

“Is he—” 

“He’s going to change tonight and we have to be there,” Nicky said. “Go give the bandages to Alex, then leave if you want.”

“I’m not leaving!”

“Then stop looking at me like that, like it’s such a shock,” Nicky snapped. “Like he’s the first one who’s ever been hurt like this.” Tom looked like he had more questions, so Nicky moved quick to make him flinch and get him going. 

“I’m sorry,” Tom stammered. “I’m sorry—”

He disappeared back to the bathroom. Nicky closed his eyes and put his arm up against one of the shelves so he could rest his forehead for a moment, just a moment before the night began. 

*

Mike’s adrenaline had crashed already, so Alex carried Andre upstairs to the guest room with the bed large enough to fit the three of them, Alex and Nicky and Andre in the middle. The comforter and blankets had been folded to the foot of the bed, the top sheet folded thick in the middle waiting for Andre. Alex laid Andre down on the sheet to soak up some of the sweat from the fever to come. 

Over Andre’s body, Nicky and Alex met eyes for a moment. Nicky took off his shirt and laid down next to Andre, wrapping an arm around Andre’s chest. Alex did the same on Andre’s other side, taking off his shirt and reaching so he could hold Andre against his chest. 

“What’s happening?” Tom asked.

“He’s gonna change,” Mike replied. “Like. Into a vampire. We have to stay and keep watch.” 

“Is it—is he gonna die?”

“If it goes badly, you’ll have to help us,” Alex said. “It shouldn’t go badly. This is how I changed. Go bring in the big chairs—there’s one in the master. We have to keep him company.” 

Mike left to bring in the other armchair from the master bedroom. Tom didn’t make any moves to pull the one from the corner of the room closer because his eyes were fixed on Andre, who was beginning to tremble on the bed, sandwiched between Nicky and Alex’s chests. 

“What’s gonna happen to him?” Tom asked again. 

“He’s going to change,” Nicky said. “The fever burns what human things are left of him: no more heartbeat, no more hunger, no more aging. His vision will be better, his body will be faster, his skin brighter, his joints perfect.”

“But when he wakes up, he’ll have our warmth and our skin against his. He’ll remember he’s a person and he probably won’t murder us,” Alex said. “So pull up a chair. We’ll take turns holding him and we’ll tell stories, and dawn will break and Andre will be here.” 

Mike came back with his chair. Tom looked to him and pointed to the three of them on the bed. “Did Alex tell you?”

“Yeah,” Mike said. “Like babies, you gotta hold them to your skin or they die. Same thing. And he’ll get even _faster_ on the ice, like he needs to be more smug about that than he already is.”

“Latts, he could wake up and kill us.”

Mike laughed and put his feet up. “If he didn’t kill you in one of your shitty moods when we all lived together, you’ll probably get through this.” Mike held out a pillow to Tom. “I got you this?”

“Why am I the only one freaking the fuck out here!”

“I’m pretty sure I’m still in shock from finding our best friend technically murdered,” Mike said. “Backy and Ovi have been dead for like, a thousand years. And Andre’s _super_ dead. So. I don’t know. I’ll probably freak out tomorrow.” He reached out for Tom’s hand and smiled. “You and Burky burrito me up and take care of me when I lose my shit tomorrow, okay?”

Tom sat down in his armchair. He glared at the bed, at Nicky and Andre and Alex, and then looked away, out the window and away from Mike, too. When he was sure no one was looking (he was wrong, because everyone was staring at him) Tom reached out and took Mike’s hand, squeezing tight as he still looked away. 

*

Nicky nodded off almost immediately, even with Andre’s skin burning against his chest and the arm Nicky had around him. Nicky pulled Andre closer as he dozed and felt Alex wrap a hand around his bicep, holding onto him as they both held onto Andre. They were too old for this to be the strangest sleeping situation they had ever found themselves in, but it still nagged at Nicky as he dozed. 

“Did I ever tell you the first time I saw Nicky?” Alex asked the boys. He kept his voice low to keep from waking Nicky, and because the rumbling of his voice in his chest would reach Andre through the fever. Even just the sound and feeling of human voices would be enough to keep Andre with them. “It was a few decades before the revolution in France, about 1754. I was in Berlin and I had finished my education in Moscow a few years earlier, so I went to see Europe before I had to settle down. Except then I saw Nicky.”

Nicky heard Mike snort. “You're like, a fucking million, dude. How do you remember the year?” 

“Everything changes when you're immortal. When I was mortal I couldn't remember what I’d had for breakfast the day before, but my brain changed when I changed. I can reach into my memories and pick out any day, any hour, and remember what I was doing, what I was wearing, what I was thinking, then put it away again.”

“So what were you wearing when you met Papa?”

“A pink coat,” Nicky interrupted. He kept his eyes closed as though he was still dozing, but he knew Alex was watching him, and he could still see the Alex of the past on that first day, that first time. “I saw him come out of a shop with an outrageous burgundy hat and a pink embroidered coat.” Nicky reached for Alex, one of his fingers brushing along Alex’s chest. 

“Burgundy and pink! I would never! The hat was a darker pink, but not _burgundy_.”

“What happened to that coat?” Nicky asked. “I loved and feared that coat.”

“I wore it to death, Nicky. It came apart at the seams in five or six years, and by then it was out of style. I left it at a pub by a university, so some student probably patched it and turned it into a very fashionable prop to complement their terrible poetry.”

“ _You_ wrote terrible poetry.”

“There was no satellite television. What on earth was I supposed to do with my time?”

Nicky gave up on dozing and looked across the bed at Alex. He smiled and, even with Andre’s clammy chest against him, he thought he could remember what it was like to blush, to feel that rush of warmth in his cheeks. “When did you first see me?”

“I stepped out of the shop,” Alex said. “There was a glint like a jewel at the corner of my eye, and I was right because it was you. You had a blue ribbon in your hair. Your hair was so much longer those days.”

“So was yours.”

“Everyone wore long hair then, and bright colors, too, before drab and respectable took over as the fashion for men. Another reason the pink coat had to leave us—harder to blend in with people when they're in their browns and navys and you're—”

“You’re you,” Nicky laughed. 

Tom finally joined the conversation, having stared out the window of the bedroom for a good hour before acknowledging the change in their collective situation.

“I can't imagine you blending in, Ovi,” Tom said. 

“World wasn't always like this, with vampires and werewolves out and about and playing with humans,” Alex said. “Can't believe I have to say that, but it's true. The world wars changed that, our kind risking our lives only to fall back into the shadows. It wasn't going to happen again.”

“So back to the pink coat and executions,” Mike said. “Papa, you were already a vampire? Shiny skin and all that?” Mike startled and grabbed Tom’s arm. “Burky’s gonna _glitter_ and he's gonna _hate_ it.”

“Oh man, he _totally_ is,” Tom laughed. 

“He can wear hats,” Nicky said. 

“But his hair, his beautiful hair,” Mike said. “Lots of scarves, maybe, to keep him from dazzling people to death and so he can let it flow.”

“You were asking,” Alex said. “About Nicky when we met.”

“Oh yeah, totally, what was that like?” Mike asked. “You were already a vampire? How old were you? Are you like, one of those super super old ones who’s been around since like. I don’t know. Old museum shit.” 

“Yes, I was changed,” Nicky said, ignoring most of Mike’s nonsense. “I had been changed for about twenty years, so I was still very new. I was in Berlin because I—I didn't take my change well. I wasn't—I didn't get this. So I hid and kept to myself for years, until I couldn't take it anymore. I went to Berlin to be with people again.”

“Are you really Swedish?” Tom asked. 

“Yes, of course I am.” Nicky looked at Alex again and smiled a little. “Berlin was the first time I left Sweden. We sound sheltered but—”

“What, you didn't just ride bikes to Europe all the time?” Tom asked. 

Alex shot Tom a look. “Bicycles wouldn't be invented for another hundred years.” 

“Oh shit, for real?”

“Wait, how did people get around?” Mike asked. “They just… _walked_?”

“Horses. If you had money, you could have _many_ horses and those horses would pull a carriage.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t they have books in Canada?” Nicky asked. “History books?”

“It’s nice you think I’m the reading type,” Mike said. 

“You forgot sedan chairs,” Alex added. 

Tom sank deeper into his armchair. “Let me know when there’s an HBO special about it.”

Alex looked across at Nicky again. “They can’t stay with us.”

“Yes they can,” Nicky said.

“Of course they can,” Alex sighed.

*

Nicky startled awake and turned his head to see Mike leaning over him. “Shirtless and worried” was an interesting look on him. 

“Alex said I can take over for a while so you can get up.”

“I don’t need to move, we don’t—”

“It’s not a physical thing, it’s a mental thing,” Alex muttered across Andre. “You get restless and upset when you’re still for too long, so go take a walk.”

“Fine,” Nicky said. He pried himself from Andre and let Mike take his place in the bed. “Skin-to-skin, remember.” 

Mike nodded and pulled Andre a little onto his side, the better to get more of Andre’s back against his chest. “It’s okay, I got it, and if I don’t, Ovi’ll pinch me or something.” 

“Don’t let him,” Nicky said. “He learned pinching from his mother and it hurts. A lot.”

Mike nodded and looked at Alex across the bed. “You heard Papa, no pinching.”

“I’ll try and keep my hands to myself.” 

Nicky stopped at Tom’s chair and checked on him. Maybe it was just tonight, but Tom seemed to be a light sleeper who opened his eyes as soon as he felt Nicky’s presence standing over him. 

“What?”

“When I come back, you’ll switch with Alex,” Nicky said. “Can you do that?” 

“Yeah. Yeah, of course I can.”

“You can leave,” Nicky said.

“I’m not leaving him again,” Tom said. “Stop saying that. I won’t change my mind.”

“Fine,” Nicky said, and he left the room.

*

For a little while in the bed, it was Mike and Tom with Andre in the middle. Andre was better, but the fever hadn’t broken yet; Nicky and Alex had held him through some violent chills, but the shuddering still racked Andre’s body. Andre breathed louder now as his new indestructible lungs replaced his old ones, the fever burning out the parts that had been damaged by living and pollution. 

Nicky and Alex were in the armchairs dragged to the foot of the bed. Alex had turned his chair to put his feet up in Nicky’s lap, his eyes alternating from the bed to Nicky with every slight noise or movement. 

“In the afternoon,” Nicky whispered to Alex. “We’ll go to Andre’s apartment and clean up the best we can. We’ll find his phone and see if he had photos of this creature.”

“Doesn’t matter. We hunted before pictures and GPS. We’ll do it again.” 

“I hate this,” Nicky said. “I hate that they did this to him. I hate that we have to find someone and tear them apart.”

“I know,” Alex said. “And we’ll have to do it quick so the team can control the story. _Andre is a vampire now, we’re taking care of him_ , that’s it, end of story.” 

A sound like words coming from the bed startled Nicky and Alex, but it was just Tom. 

“Is he gonna have a soulmate now?” Tom asked. “Is—is the guy who did this—”

“No, no, of course not,” Alex said. “No, it’s—that’s not how it works.”

“But—you guys—”

“We were soulmates first,” Nicky said. “I changed Alex after a year, when we were sure it was what we wanted. It wasn’t like this. It was nothing like this.”

“Soulmates are rare,” Alex said. “Changing won’t give him a soulmate he didn’t have already.”

“Oh,” Tom said. “I thought they were connected. I—I don’t know. You’re the only soulmates I’ve met. Like we’ve had vampires and wolves on teams before, but soulmates weren’t a thing.”

“It’s rare,” Alex repeated. “Nicky was my soulmate first. Since the moment we met, we knew. Before we saw any mark, before we touched, before we spoke a word—we knew.” 

Tom nodded, but he didn’t look happy. Then again, why would he? “I guess that’s okay. I thought since this happened, he’d get another chance, like at life and shit. I thought he’d wake up and he’d have this great new immortal body and he’d be a slick vampire like you guys—”

Nicky and Alex’s eyes met, the “Him? _Slick_?” quip on both their lips. 

“—And he’d have someone waiting for him,” Tom finished. “He’d have someone to make him happy and changing wouldn’t be the worst thing, in the end, if he had someone waiting for him.”

“That’s not how it works,” Nicky said gently. 

“I know,” Tom said. “I know that now.”

*

Nicky took over for Tom again. Dawn was approaching and Andre seemed more lucid. He had turned fully onto his side and wrapped his arms around Mike, who was half-asleep and rubbing circles into Andre’s back. Nicky pulled at their shoulders and shifted them, Andre onto his back and Mike leaning on Andre’s chest. If Andre woke before Alex could take Mike’s place, he would have his nose pressed against a warm living pulse. He could bite before he even knew what he was doing. 

Alex appeared in the doorway, a thermos from their fridge in an ice bucket that they did _not_ keep for these reasons. They just happened to have one and it happened to come in handy at this moment. He put the ice bucket on the bedside table and gently woke Mike again.

“Come on, my turn,” Alex said. “You did good.”

“But he’ll wake up soon,” Mike said. “I should be here with him.”

“In the room, not next to him where he can hurt you.”

Even hearing that, Mike still took a moment to let Andre go and leave the bed to make room for Alex. Once Alex was settled against Andre again, Nicky reached out and wrapped a hand around Alex’s arm. 

“Why did you say yes?” Nicky asked. “When I asked if you wanted to change?”

“You didn’t ask if I wanted to change,” Alex said. “You asked if I wanted to be with you.” Alex smirked a little. “It was a pretty good line.”

“You were a pretty big idiot to fall for it.”

“I was. I’d do it again. If we only had one day to live over and over again, I’d live that one—when we said we would be together always.”

Nicky nodded. “We had pretty good meat pies that day. I remember the meat pies.”

“As soon as Andre wakes up and we get out of this bed, I’m going to smother you with a pillow.”

Nicky took Alex’s hand, their fingers linked over Andre’s chest, and then Andre woke up.

*

“It’s cold, boys,” Andre whined. 

“You’re dead, Andre. That’s what dead feels like,” Nicky said.

“Oh. Right.”

It was dawn and the five of them were outside in Alex and Nicky’s backyard, all of them still shirtless and in their briefs because three of them were dead with no sense of temperature and two of them were trying to be tough. 

Alex handed Andre a fine polished wooden box roughly the size of a book. “Here. Go find some dirt and put it in this box, then we’ll seal it and that’s your box.”

Andre took the box, stared at it, stared at Mike and Tom, then looked back at Nicky and Alex.

“Have any of you read a book, ever, in your lives?” Nicky asked. 

“Vampires sleep in coffins with dirt from where they were buried,” Alex said to Andre. “Do you want to sleep in a coffin buried in our backyard? Or, do you want to fill this box with dirt from our yard, seal it up, and keep it with you so you can sleep anywhere you want?”

“...would you let me sleep in a coffin buried in your backyard?” Andre asked.

“No,” Nicky said. “Go fill up the box.”

Mike and Tom stood back while Andre wandered around the yard in his shorts and tried to pick a nice spot to be metaphorically buried. Mike was the one to elbow Alex and ask, “So how many of those pristine wooden porta-coffins do you have lying around?”

“It’s a cigar box, you idiot,” Alex said. “Ten dollars on Amazon.”

“Fine, don’t answer my question.” 

That being said, Mike followed Andre and put an arm around his shoulders, the two of them walking off towards some of the nicer trees at the edge of the yard in search of a burial plot. 

Tom took a few steps, then stopped himself. Andre sparkled in the early morning light. 

“This isn’t over, is it?” Tom asked. 

“He’ll have to tell management,” Nicky said. “And all three of you should go to therapy.”

“Fucking immediately,” Alex said. “We’ll go with you and sit outside, if you want.”

“I think I need that,” Tom said. “Okay. I’m—I’m gonna help Andre find a place to be buried. Somewhere in your backyard. And then…”

“The three of you should stay here for a few days, until our next road trip,” Alex said. “Nicky and I have to step out this afternoon and take care of something, but he should be all right now.” 

“Just make sure he drinks a thermos every few hours,” Nicky said. “The whole thing. And run the dishwasher before you go to bed.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tom said. 

He rushed after Mike and Andre to the trees they were checking out. Nicky and Alex stood back to let the three of them do their thing. Alex’s arms snaked around Nicky’s waist, holding Nicky firm against his chest. 

“Not how either of us wanted a family, but.”

“I know,” Nicky said. “But they’re ours now.” 

“I know,” Alex said. 

Nicky turned his head and brought Alex’s cheek closer, reaching up to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Order breakfast for Tom and Mike. I’ll grab us something to drink and get our things together.” 

Alex turned his head and kissed Nicky again. “It’ll be all right, Nicky. Some light hunting and avenging to protect our family and our team, and then we’ll come home.” 

“I know we don’t do this often,” Nicky said slowly. “But we should get Osh and Carly to help. They have to be better trackers than we ever were.”

“We didn’t ask wolves for help because we never saw wolves every single day of our lives before,” Alex said. “It’s a different century now. We should ask for help.”

“Okay,” Nicky said. “Okay. We should ask them. They’re our team.”

“They’re our family,” Alex said, and that was that. 

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/screamlet) \+ [reblog](http://screamlet.tumblr.com/post/159579256006/)


End file.
